After much contemplation and more than a little convincing and vision-casting on my part, we have decided to take on two big projects this winter. Both will use existing spaces in our house and turn them into something completely different.
The first and biggest project will be turning our now-dining room into two new spaces: at first a walk-in laundry room/pantry with a little hallway outside of it that will later become a butler’s pantry of sorts (more storage!). This is a big undertaking. While not super difficult there is a lot of work involved. We’ll detail this project later.
The second project will turn the then-vacated old laundry room into a mudroom. We’ll also detail this later.
There are a few driving forces behind these projects:
- Our current pantry is a sliver of a space so half of our pantry and household items are in the basement. Our deep freezer is used almost daily but is in the garage. We are tired of making multiple trips down to the basement or out to the garage or both to make a meal. With a little one around, these trips become more laborious if we have to grab the little to make those trips with us because the other person is not around to keep watch.
- Our current laundry room is pretty small. There are a few things happening in there that make it not very functional:
- you can’t store anything in the room because the door from the garage and the door into the kitchen open in such a way that they barely miss each other. You can’t have anything on the floor or you will either hit it or trip over it. Shoes are currently being lined up in our front hallway (and mine are kept upstairs in our closet) so as to keep the floor clear enough to use the doors.
- our little one is growing up, and has a slew of shoes, jackets, a backpack for daycare, a diaper bag for outings and all kinds of things we need to store somewhere. Winter brought with it more items to keep track of: gloves, hats, coats, boots, etc. As he gets older this will only get worse. Pair that with a husband who drops everything when he comes in right where he’s standing and, well, I could really a space that contains all of it.
- we hang dry at least half our clothes because we are tall and our work clothes stay nicer longer that way, which means they end up on racks throughout the kitchen because there is not enough room to contain them in the laundry room. This is not a huge deal, and we’ve lived with it for over a year now just fine. I’ve just learned not to do laundry before expecting company! But boy it would sure be nice to do laundry whenever I want and contain it somewhere other than the kitchen too.
We are really excited about these projects and look forward to bringing our ideas to life – stay tuned!
Not Tomorrow 